U.S. Supreme Court justices questioned the legality of Aereo Inc., the Barry Diller-backed startup aiming to upend the broadcast industry’s decades-old business model by selling live television programming over the Internet.

Hearing arguments Tuesday in Washington, some justices suggested they viewed Aereo as violating broadcaster copyrights by using thousands of dime-sized antennas to get over-the-air signals without paying fees.

“There’s no technological reason for you to have 10,000 dime-sized antennas other than to get around the copyright laws?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked.

At the same time, the hourlong hearing didn’t indicate clearly the likely outcome, as justices, including Stephen Breyer, repeatedly asked whether a ruling favoring the broadcasters would imperil the cloud computing business.

Aereo would give consumers a new way to watch broadcast television without buying the packages offered by cable and satellite companies. It now lets customers in 11 cities watch live and recorded broadcast programs for as little as $8 a month. The service is shut down in Denver and Salt Lake City.

Broadcasters including CBS and ABC say a legal victory for Aereo would devastate the industry
, creating a blueprint that would let cable and satellite providers stop paying billions of dollars in retransmission fees each year to carry local programming.

The broadcasters drew support from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who told Aereo’s lawyer, “you are the only player so far that doesn’t pay any royalties at any stage.”

The threat posed by Aereo was magnified last year when a federal appeals court said the company wasn’t infringing the broadcasters’ copyrights. ABC, CBS, NBCUniversal, 21st Century Fox Inc., Tribune Co. and the Public Broadcasting Service are asking the Supreme Court to reverse that ruling.

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